gehringer_2

HaHa - And I though this year was going to be the last....

shoot-outs suck

there's your point.

yeah - the situation has changed dramatically since Kaline and Mays' day. Guys were not on huge long term deals and teams were more than willing to cut bait with guys whose performance had dropped regardless of who they were. You got pretty much one year to prove you were done and you were out. I'm pretty certain that Miguel would not have have been playing in the majors for the last two years or so under the contract arrangements that existed years ago. When you think about it puts more luster on the records of the old timers who had to get to those counting statss without benefit of being able to hang on to roster spots because of their team's contract liability to them.

One theory is that Americans have lost so many of the identity anchors they used to have (social and service clubs, stable jobs, churches, neighborhoods, ethnic subcultures) that political tribalism has begun to fill those gaps in their lives and the corollary to that is that the purpose of political discourse shifts away from dialect debate that reaches for consensus and solution, to where it is mostly directed at tribal membership declaration and maintenance, where the point is no longer to engage with contrary views at all.

Not the best comparison. Willie had a bad last year in '73 but as near to that as '71 he carried a 900 OPS and led the league in walks and OBP. '72 was a relative down year - OPS+ of 'only' 131. Miguel has only been OPS+ positive once in the last 4 season and then just barely.

this

You know the type -- he's waiting for it to be worth something. Sad one: There is a guy about 2 blocks from me that has had a derelick red '56(I think) Caddy 2dr hardtop sitting uncovered, rotted rubber, one window down, slowly disssolving on his driveway for at least 10 yrs. 😥

maybe cropped from this shot?-

and yet even for all that, a big chunk of those who did die did it in the name of 'freedom' either because they wouldn't follow the available public health recommendations or later because they became vaccine naysayers. I don't know what you do with a society when you are at the 'can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink' stage."

Then again, look at Tua - seems to have suddenly blossomed into the guy there was no sign of in his 1st couple of years. It's funny, the position is probably more demanding and complex than ever, but the conventional wisdom about how long it takes a QB to get fully up to league speed has gone pretty much the other way.

Oesterle should be fine, he's been better so far this season than last I think, but then again, I'm not really worried about Seider at all.

Yeah - overall it sucks. But in the end you can't fight mother nature forever. We got at least a chunk of society to take enough precautions that the hospital system didn't fully collapse before we got vaccines, paxlovid, and monoclonals. That level of success is more than the species has ever managed before in the face of a new disease. What could be done has mostly been done (excpet for maybe China!). The Universe has just gotten a little less hospitable for our species.

Yeah - the bottom line is that until Putin believes he cannot eventually win all his objectives, there can be no settlement, and up to this point, as bad as it has been for the AFRF, it hasn't created enough (maybe any) pressure on Putin to change course. As long as the deaths of thousands of Russians is a price for Empire that Russia appears happy to pay, the West has little choice but to hold the line against them.

similar here.

one problem is that now that Russia has declared itself as the enemy of Ukrainian existance, the strategic importance to Ukraine of some of the territory captured pre 2021, and even including Crimea, has increased to a point far beyond what it was prior. Ukraine could tolerate a peaceful Russia in SE Ukraine, it can hardly tolerate a professed enemy of its existance commanding its access to the black sea. Russia's conduct has basically precluded going back to the status quo ante 2021. That is just the new reality.

almost hard to believe NW was in this game twice in the last 5 yrs.

Interesting, though Harbaugh is being a little dismissive of this own team there. Even if OSU makes the snap for the fake, it's still no gimme that some number of M players don't combine to make a play anyway or a guy doesn't run over the back of his own blocker and fall or whatever. Sure it might have worked, but no play, esp a trick play, is ever a total guarantee.

Way, way back in the day there was a lot of back and forth between Greg Landry and Bill Munson over multiple seasons, but I don't think you could call it a platoon, they just couldn't decide who was better.

That's would be about 80% of the total population of Ohio and Michigan. I do wonder what the ratio of MI+OH eyeballs to the total was.

Yikes.

I think the question for Michigan and Harbaugh is whether he's going to get bored and lose focus or start pining for one last shot at the NFL again or whether he's settled on the thing to do he really wants to keep doing. He's always seemed like kind of a restless soul type to me. Saban won a natty at 69? Harbaugh is 58? So if his mind doesn't wander off somewhere and he can keep bringing in good young position coaching talent I'd figure he's got a little more than 5 yrs - maybe say 10 yrs left - if he's healthy - and keeps winning of course! But that's a long time - who the heck knows what college football even looks like in 10yrs?

and there's issues and then there's issues. What if a guy K's a lot but also walks and hits a lot of HRs? What if a guy swings away a lot with the bases empty but always shortens up with a runner in scoring position and less than 2 outs? You can look under the covers of almost any statistical measure and find more nuance.

IDK - you don't think Michigan is up for the PSU model? How long did PSU let Paterno hang around?

TBF, not that many college teams can both run and pass well. We said that given their run game, M would be as good as the passing game allowed them to be - well they passed pretty well yesterday, and that ability to do boh is going to be hard for any college D to handle.